Perfume Genius

No Shape MATADOR. CD/DL/LP

Seattle’s boy Genius’s fourth. Now in Cinerama.

Mike Hadreas’s 2010 debut matched Anohni’s I Am A Bird Now for fragility and a despair/ hope dichotomy born from self-doubt and queer (in)visibility. By 2014’s Too Bright, Hadreas had gained the confidence to bulk up his hushed piano ballads, but No Shape is writ huge. Producer Blake Mills wraps Hadreas’s love of vintage soul and doo wop in dynamic shivery sensurround; cascading strings, electric piano, depthcharge beats, plus odd-manout glam drama Sides (co-sung with Weyes Blood) with Bolanesque lead guitar. Run Me Through is hugest, Michael Kiwanuka-style, though Hadreas’s trademark vulnerability remains. Likewise, his cries against oppression (Slip Away: “they’ll never break the shape we take”), the anguish of having to face that oppression and the search for acceptance make for a heady, volatile brew that, in these emboldened settings, have the makings of anthems.